In recent years, fin field effect transistor (“FinFETs”) devices have become an attractive option for next generation semiconductor devices. A FinFET device is a type of transistor that has a pillar or “fin” of semiconducting material that extends outward from a surface of an integrated chip. A conductive gate, covering a channel region of the fin, controls the flow of charge carriers between a source and drain of the fin.
For decades the performance of integrated chips (ICs) has been improved by reducing the size of IC components. As with conventional transistor devices, reducing the size of FinFET device components improves performance by, among other things, increasing the speed of the devices, increasing the density of the devices, and reducing the power consumption of devices. However, as the size of devices is reduced, processing problems and performance problems (e.g., gate leakage) arise.